the solid element. During the first quarter of his life he received the
taste-impressions described, only through the watery element.

Man's external bodily form was an image of this inner psychic condition.
Those parts were most fully developed which contained the first
fore-shadowing of the later form of the head. The other organs appeared
only as appendages. These were shadowy and indistinct. Yet earth-beings
varied with regard to form. There were some in whom the appendages were
more or less developed, according to the earth-conditions under which they
lived. This varied with people's different dwelling places on the earth.
Where they were more involved in the things of earth, the appendages
became more prominent. Those human beings who at the beginning of physical
development on earth were the ripest, owing to their previous evolution,
having come in contact with the fire-element at the very beginning before
the earth had been condensed into air, were those now able to develop the
first beginnings of the head most completely. They were those persons
possessing most inner harmony.

Others were ready for contact with the fire-element only when the earth
had already evolved air within it. They were more dependent upon outer
conditions than the first mentioned, who distinctly felt the Lords of Form
through heat, and during their earth-life felt as though they retained a
memory of having belonged to those spirits and of having been connected
with them in the disembodied state. The second species of human beings
only had the memory of the disembodied state to a more limited degree;
they were conscious of their fellowship with the spiritual world chiefly
through the light-influences of the Sons of Fire (Archangels). A third
type of human beings was still more entangled in earthly existence. It was
they who were unable to come in contact with the fire-element until the
earth was separated from the sun and had absorbed the watery element
within itself. Their feeling of fellowship with the spiritual world was
especially slight at the beginning of earth-life. Only when the activities
of the Archangels, and more especially of the Angels, influenced the inner
imaginative life, did they feel this connection to any degree. On the
other hand, at the beginning of the earth-period they were full of active
impulses for performing deeds which can be accomplished under earthly
conditions only. In them the extremities were particularly